Very promising tech. The first plant is expected to begin testing in 2021.
"ThorCon is developing molten salt floating nuclear reactors. They use the same steam and electrical side as a standard 500 MWe supercritical coal plant. But gone are the massive coal handling systems, the 100 m high boiler, the flue gas treatment system, and the ash handling and storage system. A generous estimate of the overnight cost of the ThorCon steam side, everything but the nuclear island, is $700/kW. This is a well-established number.
The total overnight cost of a 500 MWe coal plant is between 2000 and 1400 dollars per kW. Both figures assume no attempt at carbon capture. ThorCon would be 2 to three times cheaper than coal.
The ThorCon nuclear island requires one-sixth as much steel and one-fourth as much concrete as the portion of the coal plant upstream from the turbine. A 1 GWe ThorCon nuclear island requires less than 400 tons of superalloys and other exotic materials. ThorCon operating at near ambient pressure has a 2:1 advantage in steel and a 5:1 advantage in concrete over its nuclear competitors on the nuclear side. Much more importantly, very little of ThorCon’s concrete is reinforced. Reinforced concrete is impossible to automate, drives the critical path, is not amenable to block construction, and entombs the critical portion of the plant in a mausoleum making repair and replacement extremely difficult. ThorCon can be produced entirely in bargable blocks at shipyard assembly line productivity.
Based on resource and labor requirements and allowing for stringent inspection and testing, the ThorCon nuclear island should cost less than $500 per kW on an overnight basis.
Thorcon wants to provide Indonesia initially with 7 cents per kwh power that can be moved to any of the hundreds of islands in Indonesia. The costs should then go down with later units."
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/08/china-and-russia-looking-at-27-floating-nuclear-reactors-but-thorcon-and-indonesia-could-scale-to-100-per-year.html
"ThorCon is developing molten salt floating nuclear reactors. They use the same steam and electrical side as a standard 500 MWe supercritical coal plant. But gone are the massive coal handling systems, the 100 m high boiler, the flue gas treatment system, and the ash handling and storage system. A generous estimate of the overnight cost of the ThorCon steam side, everything but the nuclear island, is $700/kW. This is a well-established number.
The total overnight cost of a 500 MWe coal plant is between 2000 and 1400 dollars per kW. Both figures assume no attempt at carbon capture. ThorCon would be 2 to three times cheaper than coal.
The ThorCon nuclear island requires one-sixth as much steel and one-fourth as much concrete as the portion of the coal plant upstream from the turbine. A 1 GWe ThorCon nuclear island requires less than 400 tons of superalloys and other exotic materials. ThorCon operating at near ambient pressure has a 2:1 advantage in steel and a 5:1 advantage in concrete over its nuclear competitors on the nuclear side. Much more importantly, very little of ThorCon’s concrete is reinforced. Reinforced concrete is impossible to automate, drives the critical path, is not amenable to block construction, and entombs the critical portion of the plant in a mausoleum making repair and replacement extremely difficult. ThorCon can be produced entirely in bargable blocks at shipyard assembly line productivity.
Based on resource and labor requirements and allowing for stringent inspection and testing, the ThorCon nuclear island should cost less than $500 per kW on an overnight basis.
Thorcon wants to provide Indonesia initially with 7 cents per kwh power that can be moved to any of the hundreds of islands in Indonesia. The costs should then go down with later units."
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/08/china-and-russia-looking-at-27-floating-nuclear-reactors-but-thorcon-and-indonesia-could-scale-to-100-per-year.html